1. Field of Invention
The present invention relates generally to the field of failure or fault analysis (FA) of electronic systems, in particular avionic electronic systems, and even more particularly line replacement units (LRUs) in those systems.
2. Description of Related Art
Avionics electronic systems employ redundant LRUs so that when one fails, the other is available during flight. Such redundancy creates obvious increases the cost of the system. There are additional costs in these systems with failing LRUs. When a unit fails, aircraft are generally not allowed to operate unless both redundant systems are functional. Since an unscheduled delay of a Boeing 747 airplane can cost $1000 a minute with customer, crew, and schedule impacts, it is important to estimate when a LRU is about to fail. Historically, LRUs have been subject to failure analysis by manually estimating when the units will fail.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,947,797 (Dean et al.) discloses a method and system for diagnosing machine malfunctions through Case Base Reasoning. Dean et al. does not, however, disclose the prognosis of machine failure. Further, the '797 patent, while suggesting collecting data in real-time, does not utilize this data in real-time to predict failure, but employs the data later over a selectively focused time interval to diagnose a repair.
What is lacking in the prior art is a method and apparatus for real-time failure analysis of a LRU using self-contained computer-automated means.